How crushing would it be to know that others think you are a lesser human being? Or that you are an "unlucky child" (who grows into an unlucky adult)? Our kids need every bit of confidence they can get in this world.

Here's the thing about this onslaught of mom guilt: I refuse to engage. What's helped deflect it is knowing that I am not a perfect mom, because there is no such thing as a perfect mom. I am a doing-the-best-that-I-can mom.

When people figure that Max has autism because he looks or acts a certain way, or when people think that kids with autism are like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, they presume to know what our children are like -- which does our kids a major disservice.

What does it really mean to have cerebral palsy? Until I had a child with CP, I had no clue that it affects every person differently. As with any human, kids and adults with CP are as unique as their thumbprints.

No person's merit (let alone a child's) should be irrevocably determined by how his muscles move, the way his brain works, or whether he speaks in the way that people typically speak or looks the way people typically look.

Language is a living thing, regularly pruning words that once had benign meaning ("retarded", for instance, was a medical term for "slowed") after they take on connotations beyond their original point. This process is not just window dressing or political correctness but rather a chance and provides a regular re-evaluation of whether we are saying what we really mean.

I'd venture that this is a typical mixed reaction you might get from a parent of a kid with special needs. It's hard not to be tempted by alternate treatments when mainstream medicine offers so few options.